The Gospel According to Red Sox Nation

I can relate to the recent post on Lox et Veritas about how sports is a religion for many people. … Continued

by Shari Rabin

I can relate to the recent post on Lox et Veritas about how sports is a religion for many people. I say this because I can see Fenway Park from my dorm room, and as I sit typing, there are swarms of fans flooding Beacon Street outside my window, cheering and running and shouting expletives. I just saw my friend Larry out there banging on a cowbell. My roommate and I didn’t even have to ask anyone or turn on the TV or check online to see if the Red Sox won – we could hear it. The Red Sox are going to the World Series and the people of Boston are in a religious ecstasy.

Of course all season we’ve heard fans walking past our apartment on their way home from the game at ungodly hours. One particularly charming incident was on the first night of Rosh Hashannah, when I lay in bed, tossing and turning to drunken screams of “Go Red Sox!” and, oddly, “Konichiwa!” outside. Their religious event and mine coincided. But now this is the culmination of the Red Sox fans’ pure and unwavering devotion. I don’t know a lot about baseball, but I do know that starting Wednesday night, I should probably not plan on going to bed early.

This former Bostonian can testify that Red Sox fandom, at moments like this, becomes a frenzied, ecstatic religious state, a combination of Whirling Dervish hyperexcitability and hallucinatory revelations.But like all such manifestations of religious mania, this Sox-enthusiasm is prone to ending badly.The Sox broke my heart in 1946 when they lost the World Series to St. Louis. I suffered from baseball-depression for decades thereafter.Lets hope the flagellating mobs and yobs outside your window enjoy a different outcome this year.

Mae

I wrote to Lox et Veritas about how sports (even baseball!) garners enthusiasm, not because it matters so much but, because everyone knows that it matters so little. On the other hand, Now I am ready to see the relationship between religion and sports. As I was watching the Red Sox win game seven, I saw people in the stands holding signs that read “I believe”. I thought this was the White Sox slogan in 2005, MY friend tells me I am all wrong, “I believe” began to appear in 1969 with the “miracle” Mets. My question is “what is it they believe?”.